A Series of AntiClimaxes
by ArkQueetely
Summary: A series of four pieces exploring non-outright canon pairings in Spring Awakening: Melchior/Moritz, Anna/Wendla, Melchior/Ilse, Moritz/Ilse.
1. MelchiorMoritz Hint of a Spark

_A/N: This was a series of four short pieces I posted over the course of a year and a half. The idea was to explore some pairings that aren't canon, at least not outright, without playing them out to any large degree -- sort of a challenge to try and make various pairings seem plausible. This first one was originally posted on LJ July 26th, 2007. Title from Death Cab For Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into The Dark."_

**Part 1: The Hint of a Spark (Moritz/Melchior)**

_Sometimes the things about ourselves that perhaps we should question, should pay attention to, are the very things we don't see ourselves until after they've been revealed to those around us._

It was an exceedingly nice afternoon. A dry heat embraced them with a sort of comforting touch -- but still, it pulled at their jackets, itched at their skin, and as they stumbled under the shade of a tree they quickly discarded their woolen cages of jackets and unbuttoned their vests.

The ground beneath them was rough and uneven, intertwined with large, spider-esque tree roots and scattered leaves and branches. When Moritz leaned back against the chipping bark, it rubbed painfully against the back of his head. When he looked out, however, the ground spread out before him was dabbed with spots of sunlight like an impressionist painting, and he was willing to endure the reality to experience the fantasy.

They filled the silence with idle chatter.

"It's a lovely day today," Moritz commented

"A little sweltering," Melchior said, pushing up his sleeves and glancing at the sun with slight distaste.

"At least the heat is better than the bleakness of winter," Moritz said.

Melchior didn't reply, but Moritz saw the smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth. Moritz studied the black buttons on Melchior's vest as the other boy leaned back against the bark of the tree, closing his eyes and letting the leaves cast muddled shadows on his face. The stillness of the woods was peppered with bird's song, a slight breeze rustled the tree branches and made the shadows flitter about like living beings. Everything seemed strangely serene. But, it was an eerie serenity, and it made Moritz's skin crawl with something strange and unbidden.

The silence hung over them, and it ate at him but Moritz felt as though there was something new, something strange in this single moment that he wanted to grasp onto for just a second more, and a second after that, just to be able to understand it's meaning.

Moritz reached forward, tracing his thumb over the grooves in the button on his friend's vest. He wasn't sure, exactly – it wasn't the button. It was the action, somehow. Something in it made him hold his breath.

He glanced up and met Melchior's eyes – and there was no reason not to expect that, but somehow it broke something, pulled the color from Moritz's face, and made him feel that he'd made a mistake. He dropped into a fearful situation where he could not speak on his own behalf, even to himself.

There was nothing questioning or accusing in Melchior's gaze -- just that sort of affectionate amusement that lingered on Melchior's face, at times slightly mocking and other times slightly comforting, every time his eyes fell on Moritz. There were questions, however, weighing down Moritz's chest, blocking his throat, and when Melchior's fingers brushed lazily over his own just for a moment, perhaps meant and perhaps not, Moritz wasn't sure whether to flee or to burst into tears.

It wasn't that he didn't want this – or that he wanted it, he didn't even know, couldn't bring his thoughts into focus. He was left chasing feelings without logic and drowning in questions, questions, questions.


	2. AnnaWendla Not Who I Used To Be

_A/N: This one was originally posted with the first part on July 26th, 2007. Title from Death Cab For Cutie's "Brothers on a Hotel Bed." Dedicated to LJ user prosopopeya._

**Part 2: Not Who I Used To Be (Anna/Wendla)**

Wendla wasn't the oldest in their group, or the bravest, or maybe even the prettiest – maybe. She was always... in charge, though. As they wandered the woods, they always followed behind her. Anna wasn't entirely sure how that unspoken position came to be. Perhaps it was process of elimination.

Anna – Anna couldn't lead anyone. She was sure of that.

Thea certainly couldn't lead them. She was strong, opinionated – but not for herself. She stood behind others wonderfully – championing their opinions and their logic, but when she had to make decisions, when she had people hanging on her word, she collapsed under the weight.

Martha, well. Anna found herself all too often the one trailing behind to talk to Martha, to take her hand, to draw her into the group. Martha was almost outside the group entirely – far from the front of it.

But, Wendla -- Wendla fell at the forefront with a kind of grace. Anna saw Wendla as the fierce one. She spoke fearlessly -- saying things that were unexpected, unpopular, occasionally unkind but always what she felt honestly. Anna tried to model herself after this example, and Martha told her once that she admired Anna – admired her fearlessness. But, she didn't see herself that way. She didn't care to see herself much at all – she wanted to see Wendla. Wendla, who was all at once fierce and proud but so much closer to childhood than the rest of them – Anna wanted to be that.

When Wendla said she was going to walk up to her uncle's farm – visit the horses – Anna asked to come with. She wasn't sure, exactly, what she was trying to accomplish by this, but it meant something to her.

"This is Uncle's favorite," Wendla said knowingly, reaching through the bars to stroke the horse with adoration. "I don't remember its name, but it's kind. Would you like to feed it a carrot?"

Anna leaned against the opposite stall door, casting weary glances at the black horse behind her. She looked from Wendla to the nameless horse with a look she was sure lacked the confidence she was trying to conjure up. Anna's family had moved here only a few years ago, from the city, and all these large animals made her exceedingly nervous.

"I suppose," she said.

Wendla reached into the sack at her feet and pulled out a knobbly looking carrot that was too short, far too short, when Anna wanted to put as much distance between her fingers and the nameless horse's mouth as she could. Anna took the carrot and gripped it as far down toward the end as she could manage, and looked the horse in the eye. Wendla had given it no name or gender and that only made it worse, only made it more of a mythical beast.

Wendla was impatient. She took Anna's hand in hers and gripped the vegetable with confidence, poking it through the bars for the horse to grab. As the horse broke off a piece with its large, imposing teeth, the carrot gave a crack and Anna jumped. Wendla giggled slightly, then looked away suddenly.

"I don't know if horses like me very much, Wendla," Anna suggested, shaken.

Wendla took the rest of the carrot from her, holding it to the horse. "I'll teach you to get along with the horses, Anna. It just takes time, that's all – would you like to see the kittens?"

Kittens, Anna thought, were much more agreeable than horses. "Your uncle has kittens?"

Wendla grabbed Anna's hand and pulled her to the stall at the end of the aisle and Anna grinned without thinking. She didn't even mind the horse that was staring at her with it's large, otherworldly eyes from the stall next to her – she might not care for the barn and its horses but she didn't mind it, didn't mind trying, when Wendla was there, pulling her from place to place with an effortless, childlike wonder that Anna was trying desperately to cling to herself.

Wendla gripped the heavy stall door and dragged it open a crack, just enough for them to slip through. Wendla, petite as she was, slipped easily through the crack, and Anna followed her with a slow caution.

"See? Kittens," Wendla said, sitting on the ground with no care for her clothes, which were pristine on the walk to the barn but were now stained with dust and dirt. Anna thought Wendla looked more herself that way anyway.

Anna knelt beside Wendla, carefully pulling up her skirt before she did so, and peered in the box of kittens. "They're precious," Anna said, feeling she should say something. Her attention trailed away from the kittens as Wendla entwined her arm with Anna's, leaning against her shoulder as she pointed with her other hand.

"That one's my favorite," Wendla said, her voice ringing with all the purity of a child.

Anna looked down at Wendla's head lying against her shoulder and she was struck with a sort of disappointment. Wendla was still a child. Wendla was enchanted by the animals and she clung to Anna like a daughter to her mother, and she must not see, must not understand, that Anna was hoping for someone, anyone... to cling to her like that for any other reason.

Wendla dipped her head back, her vivid eyes meeting Anna's, and then Anna saw it, there, in her expression. That tinge of fearful curiosity that made her realize that maybe, maybe everything she thought she knew about Wendla Bergmann, from her eternal childishness to her courageousness in everything, might be a farce afterall. Wendla's expression asked questions, asked guidance, told Anna that she wanted someone else to lead her somewhere for once.

Anna drew away, reaching to lift a kitten, tiny and mewing, from the box.

Anna couldn't lead anyone.


	3. MelchiorIlse My Latest Mistake

_A/N: This one was originally posted August 7th, 2007. For prosopopeya, who suggested the pairing to me originally. Takes place post-canon. Title from Anna Nalick - "Breathe (2 am)." This is actually one of my favorite fics I've ever written but, as these things often go, the one that got the least response. _

**Part 3: My Latest Mistake (Ilse/Melchior)**

"The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us." - Robert Louis Stevenson

He had a lot of time to think recently. He thought he'd have himself sorted out by now, but if anything his thoughts and feelings were more a tangle than ever. His memory had two divisions now: Melchior before the reformatory and Melchior after the reformatory. The latter was new, a recent concept, but it seemed less like a period in his life and more like a different life entirely.

Right now he was staring into a mirror that seemed to break his face into a hundred pieces with a network of hairline cracks. Yet again, he brought the wet cloth to his face and scrubbed at the layer of grime that lingered there. After he managed to dump some water over his head, soaking the mess his hair had become, he was beginning to look a little less like the runaway he was and more like that other Melchior – Melchior before the reformatory. Water still running down his neck, Melchior met his own hard gaze yet again, and he could see a kind of fear in those foreign features – his own fear and uncertainty as he failed to fully connect the person in the mirror with himself. It was certainly not the first time he felt that way.

Decisively, he pulled on the borrowed shirt that hung alone on the clothes line. It was loose on him, he had to roll the sleeves up to his elbows to keep them from falling in his way, and it carried a musty smell – but anything was better than what he had before.

The trees that surrounded him were ominous and uninviting, but in the days that passed he had come to embrace that darkness, that seeming endless stretch of woods and back roads, for their cover allowed him another day of freedom. However, he couldn't help but glance back at the dilapidated shack behind him -- that was his mistake.

When he had spotted Ilse in the woods as the sun set, he had been faced with a choice. He could keep on going through the woods, try and find the road and see where he could go from there... or he could approach her. Beg her assistance. After all, she was a sort of outcast, and now so was he, and though he should have perhaps been more cautious, he was so beat down with grief, hunger, guilt – the things that kept him going, the need to repent for the part he played in Wendla's tragic end and to carry on her and Moritz's spirits in his actions, seemed far off. The thought had even crossed his mind that if Ilse betrayed him, maybe that was for the better...

But, she hadn't. He found himself now outside this little shack she'd led him to, with the water and shirt – he had no knowledge of its previous owner – she had acquired for him, and he had been planning to bolt, to take advantage of whatever little she could offer him and then continue on... but as he looked back now at the shack -- surely she was inside still -- the idea disgusted him a little. It wasn't him to not at least offer thanks, a goodbye. He wasn't so sure who he was anymore, but with a determination that comforted him a little, he was sure that that was not him.

The door, sitting uneven on its hinges, creaked as he pushed it open. Ilse looked up from the armchair she was sitting in – the only piece of furniture he could make out in the room – and the moonlight pouring in from behind him made ghostly shadows of her features.

"Now you're looking more like yourself," she said, her voice carrying a cheeriness that seemed otherworldly in his current state of mind. He didn't care for the phrase, and he thought, disconcertingly, that she couldn't possibly see him so well with his back to the moonlight. She ushered him, reluctantly, to the chair and perched herself on one arm, her form a dark shadow next to him.

"Thanks, Ilse," he said, and somehow the words sounded strange on his tongue. "I know you didn't have to help me..." His voice trailed off, sounding so foreign to his ears.

"I don't know if you deserve help or condemnation, Melchior," she said. She turned her head, looking straight ahead, and the moonlight outlined the profile of her face. "But I can say that for a lot of people."

Melchior didn't know how to respond, and he wished he didn't have to. There was a sort of sweetness in Ilse's voice that was so familiar to him -- brought thoughts of Moritz, Wendla, school, thoughts that felt much further in the past than they should have and seemed to belong to a happier, more innocent time. Melchior had always spent a lot of time alone -- but there was a difference between being alone by choice and being lonely. The thought made him realize how alone he really was now, how much the thoughts of the people he'd lost had kept him going but how unsatisfactory they seemed in the face of living people.

In the midst of these thoughts, Melchior had abandoned the conversation, left it in an awkward, stretching silence. He almost didn't notice that the shape of Ilse's shadowed form had changed, that the worn fabric of her skirt was brushing up against his leg now, and though he was very aware at the light touch of her fingers in his hair, he didn't stop her.

"Your hair's still a dirty mess," she commented, her tone a little mocking, a little laughing, thick with an innocence that contradicted the way she now slid from the arm of the chair into his lap. He gripped her forearm roughly to push her off him, chastise her for making this into something so inappropriate to the moment at hand, but suddenly there was her mouth against his and everything seemed a lot less straightforward.

It was a horribly unfair situation to be in, and he felt like he was struggling for mental footing.

Ilse's fingers were brushing against the back of his neck and in a sudden feeling of despair he pulled her hand away. She pulled back abruptly, almost teetering off his lap and the chair. "Don't," he croaked.

Melchior could feel the heat rising to his cheeks, a mixture of guilt and – part of that guilt – a lingering thrill heavy in his chest.

The moon shone brightly on the curled mess of Ilse's hair as she returned to her feet. At the angle she stood now he could see the playfulness in her expression almost entirely absent. With one hand she clutched the opposite elbow, with the other her fingers rested at her lips in thought.

There was something sort of heavy in the room, a sort of despair. They said nothing. Melchior stood and just watched her for a moment, her eyes meeting his and he couldn't read them. They were both lonely, he realized. Both pulled far away from the joyful childhood they shared. The guilt that had been eating at him turned cold, distant. The whole incident carried a sort of air of tragedy now.

Uncertainly, he reached out and touched her arm, fingers lightly brushing the fabric of her sleeve.

Then he walked away from her for what he knew may be the last time.


	4. IlseMoritz Love Is The Answer

_A/N: Originally posted December 25th, 2008. A Christmas gift for LJ user amything, who'd wanted me to write Ilse/Moritz for over a year but I'd never gotten around to it. Thanks to betas LJ users prosopopeya and msmoocow. Title from Regina Spektor - "Reading Time With Pickle."_

**Part 4 (final): Love Is the Answer to a Question that I Have Forgotten (But I Know I've Been Asked) (Ilse/Moritz)**

_Ilse never really thought much of the children back in town. Still children, when she had fallen into so much more._

"One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind." -- Charles Dickens

She was handed a bottle of beer. She didn't drink at first. No. Just let it sit there for a while, resting on her thigh as she held it in her hands, running her thumbs down it, sliding down the glass, not cold but just cool, approaching luke warm, but the cold and the cool and the warm all blended together, blurred by the constant caress of her slender fingers. She stared at the fireplace, cackling at her, and she was alone in the room for the moment but she still pretended that it was simply involuntary, unconscious, how the tips of her fingers slid over the curve of the bottle, considering what was coming, not scared or excited or wanting to or not wanting to but just considering.

Holding the bottle gently, delicately, but not so gently as to let it slip from her fingers, to look like she didn't want it, she lifted the bottle to her lips and the beer tasted awful warm but that was all the better. It felt like it should be bitter. It wasn't the first sip of beer she'd had but regardless she couldn't imagine or recall any other taste as she swallowed and it lingered just a little. The important things rarely came easy. So independence had to taste bitter, she had to choke it down, because she couldn't see how it was her freedom if she didn't have to take it kicking and screaming.

She didn't know why she cried a little, in his arms, after her lover had fallen asleep. She had no reason to cry anymore – that night she had lifted the bottle to her own lips and called the bed hers when she laid down with him and if she didn't want to, she could have not, but she wanted to. Ilse wanted to sip her beer, lay in her bed and have sex with her man. She knew his name, even when she moved on to the next one, the next bed, the next bottle of beer, but in her head she never said it. Didn't need to. She didn't name the beer or the bed either, so she didn't see why it mattered.

The funny thing was, it only lasted so long before she started coming back to town. More or less. She'd stand at the edge of the river she'd crossed to get away from that life and she'd watch that place from afar. Sometimes kids would come down to the water on the other side – kids. Who used to be her good friends, when she was a child also. She'd see Wendla Bergman a lot, alone, and sometimes the girl wouldn't even spot Ilse across the river as she stared out at nothing but sometimes she did, and sometimes she smiled, though it was a sad sort of smile, and Ilse wondered if that sadness was for her. She didn't know what would make Wendla think that Ilse was in need of that kind of smile and not Wendla herself.

Ilse even saw the boys sometimes, on the other side of the river. She hadn't been gone so long from that town but it had been so long since she'd really known them, been able to run through the mud with them and be children, real children, that it felt like a very long time. Of course, it was clear, they weren't the children she had befriended years ago. They were older now, looking more like men than boys. But at the same time, they didn't carry themselves as if they knew it yet, and when they stared at her across the water, they weren't the stares of men. Almost. Not yet.

So she had no reason to be scared or excited or otherwise bothered when one of these boys crossed that bridge one day. No reason. So she rested her fingers on her chest and could not understand why her heart was racing. Maybe it was because Moritz didn't just stare at her from afar like he did when he was always cowering beside Melchior, but because he was alone, and he kept on walking, hesitantly, across the bridge in her direction.

Just across the bridge, several feet away, he stopped. "Hello... Ilse," he said, as though he didn't really remember how to speak without thinking carefully about how the syllables came together.

"Moritz," she said, smiling, and her heart fluttered a little and she was sure it was because it had been so long since they'd spoken. So long she couldn't even remember.

He looked like he wanted to say something but no words came. He swallowed uncomfortably and she felt his eyes flicker down her body and then into the distance, and though it was such a familiar look it seemed to catch her off-balance.

When she thought of Moritz, her thoughts always wandered back to when they were kids. They were a troublesome bunch – her, Moritz, Melchior, and Wendla. Melchior always had the elaborate games with great backstory and complicated rules that they'd forget or change twice over by the time the evening was over, and Wendla would always cheat and Moritz would always follow the rules diligently as though he absorbed everything Melchior said sponge-like and Ilse would always stick with Wendla because Melchior always let her get away with anything.

She wondered if she had perhaps been mistaken. That maybe she hadn't seen what she thought she saw in his eyes. That maybe the change had happened in herself. That maybe she really hadn't separated her life now with her life back across the bridge. That maybe if she crossed that bridge things wouldn't be the same as when she had crossed to get to this side.

Or maybe it wasn't just her. Maybe she was right about him also.

"I better go," he said apologetically, and his words were so sweet, and so was his shy smile and it occurred to her that she could know. That if he really was more than the boy she had once known, she knew how to get into men's heads. Right? Moritz hadn't moved, and she saw him swallow uncomfortably again and she realized she was staring into his eyes and she could feel her hands shaking and she thought, distantly, that this was strange... confusing. She'd kissed a lot of people in her young life and she had never shaken before.

"I've missed seeing you." She didn't really think about the words and they meant nothing to her. Ilse felt like she had to remind herself how to walk, left, right, left, right, as she came closer to his body frozen there, his breath quick, and she found that she couldn't do it. Somehow, she couldn't do it. She looked into his eyes and she couldn't just walk up and kiss him on the mouth like she would anyone else. Awkwardly -- god, how long had it been since she felt awkward? -- she leaned forward and kissed him, gently, on the cheek.

He jerked away, his eyes wide, and he blurted out, "I better go," as if the only words he could pull out at a moment's notice were ones he had already thought of, and she turned away and didn't watch his quick footsteps back over the bridge.

She told herself, when she calmed down later, what a bad idea that had been, that the boys in town were not like the spontaneous artists she knew, and how when it came down to it she didn't want back into that world across the bridge, and she certainly didn't want Moritz Stiefel, a boy who couldn't be kissed on the cheek without having a nervous breakdown.

But that night, in the arms of a man who would be happy to give her so much more than her mind could imagine Moritz Stiefel ever giving, she could only press her lips to his and imagine what Moritz would do if she kissed him like that, and she could imagine the shaking in her own hands and his gasping breaths and the whole thing so awkward and fumbling and she had to admit that it was sort of charming.

Charming, she thought, as she lay in bed staring up at the stars that were the same ones they had played games under as children, to be with someone who would think that her lips were something worth getting upset about.

Next time she saw him, she told herself, rolling away from the window and pulling the sheet up to her chin, next time... maybe, she'd find out if she was right.


End file.
